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So we were as close to friends as someone like that could be. And he took my opinions, he let me contribute to the shelter. Now there were people that came in to help the residents get ready for job interviews, we partnered with charities to give donated clothes for these interviews. I ran a meditation class once every fortnight. There were separate dorms for women and children. Therapists for battered women. Drug and addiction meetings. Classes on things like how to get good credit, apply for an apartment. All the stuff high school never taught you. What parents were supposed to teach you.
Jay paid for it all out of his own pocket.
It was a deep pocket to be fair, but he didn’t cut costs. The shelter felt more like a high-end dorm room than a homeless shelter. It was the most sought after in the city.
It was a warm and welcoming place, offered as much peace as these broken souls were able to grasp. It was that for me. When I finally found it. When I found I could help people even when I couldn’t help myself.
And now Heath was here.
Dripping his hate and anger all over the place. Knowing him like I did, and all the men that had surrounded me since birth, I knew speaking to him, asking him to leave wasn’t going to do any good. So I decided just to pretend he didn’t exist.
A laughable concept when someone like Heath took the very oxygen from the room, from my bones.
But I managed to do so by unpacking the food, lining up what I needed, mentally thinking of a recipe since I didn’t ‘do’ recipe books. I didn’t like to follow rules.
Luckily more volunteers filtered in, offered me a bright hello and a questioning glance toward Heath, who offered them a slightly subdued glare.
“That’s Heath, he’s security for the day,” I said with a faux bright tone, as if he wasn’t glaring and my heart wasn’t breaking.
Chester, the youngest volunteer, still in high school, who wore all black down to his eyeliner and nail polish, raised his brows. “Since when did we need security? We barely have stabbings anymore now that you’ve instituted that no weapons rule.”
Heath’s eyes bulged.
My smile didn’t fail, but it did tighten. “Oh, Jay was just trialing this new company, I don’t think it’s going to stick, though. They’re very busy with high profile celebrity clients.”
“Celebrities?” Chester asked. He might eschew a lot of traditional teenage past times, which led him to find solace here but wasn’t exempt to being seduced by the celebrity culture.
“You don’t know Unquiet Mind, do you?” he asked, enthusiasm leaking into his normally monotone voice. “For a mainstream band, they actually don’t totally blow.”
My grin turned real.
We did know the world-famous rock band, considering the lead singer was the daughter of one of Lucy’s good friends, Mia, who was married to another one of Lucy’s biker friends, Bull. But I wasn’t one to name drop.
“How about you help me chop these carrots and we just treat Heath like part of the furniture?” I asked, cutting this off before Heath could be rude to a kind kid I respected and felt protective over. “He’s not really a people person,” I added, looking in Heath’s direction, but not at him.
Chester sighed but didn’t hesitate to do what I’d asked.
He was a good kid. A really good kid. His parents didn’t know that because they took his outward persona to be his inside one. And they didn’t understand quite how making oneself look black and dark on the outside might be a way to chase it from the inside. Plus, they lived in a gated community, belonged to a country club and drove a Range Rover. They were about image. And having a son like Chester, no matter how much they loved him, was a blow to them. So they tried to change him. Gently, of course. But trying to change a teenager from something they consider their solace, their identity was not a gentle process. One of the reasons Chester landed here. Not because his parents put him here, or because he wanted something for a college transcript.
He wasn’t even going to college.
He just wanted to help.
“I figured a lot of these people are misunderstood. Misunderstood at first and then it turns into something else. And something else. And that’s how they get here,” he said on his second day.
I fell in love with that kid a little more every day. If I ever had a son, I wished for someone with Chester’s soul.
I wished I could’ve said the rest of the prep passed in a blur. But it didn’t. It was as if everything was in slow motion. The seconds dragged pieces of me through broken glass with Heath’s stare. With the power of the distance in it. The lack of emotion. I forced myself to smile. Laugh. Make jokes.
